"Shining" phone steals a little Agora magic

Okay, we don't really know what's going on here, but a "Shining" phone that looks almost exactly like the original version of the Kogan Agora Android phone just popped up on Alibaba with a three-day delivery time and a 100-unit wholesale price of $240. Of course, the Agora was just delayed indefinitely, so this could just be nothing; contracting design and development out to faceless Chinese manufacturers like Kogan's doing is pretty much a deal with the KIRF devil, and those are definitely renders on the site, not actual pictures. Still, we're dying to see a flood of non-G1 Android handsets shake up the mobile market, and if getting stoked over sketchy Asian copies of semi-vaporware Australian phones is how we have to get our kicks, well, we're looking for new friends with an extra 24 grand and a healthy sense of forgiveness.

[Thanks, Raymanism]

[grruse Posted Jan 20th 2009 6:18AM]

It's likely that Kogan was just using an off the shelf Chinese design. Which was a heavily inspired by the Samsung Blackjack anyway. On the back of Kogan's publicity comes this, which is going to suffer from the same screen resolution issues as Android evolves.

Meh. KIRF and let KIRF.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 20th 2009 7:58AM]

Do you think all Android phones will look as terrible as the G1 and Shining? I've got a feeling we're going to end up in a situation like what happened with desktop PCs, where they're all generic, plasticky and people care about is the hardware specs.

[(Unverified) Posted Jan 20th 2009 10:08AM]

Is this just another shoddy "let down" phone from 阿里巴巴 while we're waiting for the next decent Android phone? Never mind, it's too Sammy for me anyway.

[Mr Death Posted Jan 20th 2009 10:49AM]

Heeeere's Johnny! XD